


catharsis

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Empath, M/M, Oral Sex, Sex Work, Sex Worker Mo Guanshan, Special Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: He Tian arches a brow. ‘And do we… hold hands for this?’‘You got a problem with it?’‘I’ve paid a sex worker to help me with my emotonal impotency,’ says He Tian dryly. ‘I think I can manage a little hand holding.’-[19 Days Request for@19elaine- sex-worker/empath!Guan Shan takes He Tian on as a client.]
Relationships: He Tian/Mo Guanshan (19 Days)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 292





	catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the lovely **[@19elaine](http://19elaine.tumblr.com)** for requesting this work from me - it was an absolute pleasure to take her prompt and run with it. There's a mesh of a few themes, and I hope you as readers will enjoy!

The _souk_ is busy tonight. The hot, dry air is smoky with spiced vegetable dishes and incense, and Guan Shan has a headache after the first hour. It takes him two hours to find what he’s looking for: his usual tailor, stationed at a new stall tonight—first come, first serve—who will fashion him a green shirt to match the earring that dangles from his right lobe, the ring on the knuckle of his left thumb, the piercing that lances through his septum. 

These days, he’s feeling green. 

There’s enough of it in New Emirate, a fifty-year-old city of rainforests and gardens built in tower blocks, and a view of restricted, sprawling regenerative land outside the city walls from the rooftops. No harm in adding more green to it, he reasons. He brings only more of the outside in—soon, he hopes, the roles will be reversed. 

Another year, maybe two, and he’ll have his request filed for ‘moving out’: going off-grid, away from the quick chaos of the city, where solar electricity is limited and water comes from the rivers and he won’t spend three hours numbly flicking through a fucking Holo screen. There’ll be none of that with half an acre of his own land to farm, on which to thrive and try to survive.

The reality is near—but not yet.

‘You have better uses for your money,’ says the tailor, adjusting Guan Shan’s cuffs in the mirror, inspecting the seams. It suits him well, rainforest green setting off his red hair and eyes and the finespun gold glint of his lashes, and it’s soft. A blend of hemp and bamboo and textile offcuts still lingering from the old days. 

‘You don’t want my business?’ Guan Shan asks her. 

Evita snorts, running her hands along his shoulders with a cursory brush, evaluating the even feel of the cloth. She is a small brown-skinned woman with a faintly rolling accent whose great-great-grandparents, she’d told him once, were from a country marked on the map in the uncharted west as ‘Bolivia’, closed-off to sloping lands and mountains where snow has once again started to fall, now tended to by the indigenous populace and no one else—not unless they’re willing to learn.

Evita’s prosthetic arm has a slight, heavy weight to it that Guan Shan feels down his spine, but the gesture is cursory and short-lived. Stepping back, she clips off the bulky digi-lens over her eye and nods to herself. 

‘You have a penchant for accumulation,’ she says. ‘Buying new things—old and new.’

‘Are you callin’ me a capitalist materialist?’ Guan Shan asks. He brings her his old clothes sometimes, too—the things he’s no longer feeling. For a small fee, she’ll pull the fabric apart down to its singular strands of stitching and making something new of it. Everything in her _souk_ stall has had another life once. Old and new, here, means nothing.

Evita puts her metal hand on her hip. ‘Are you missing something in your life that I can’t make for you out of cloth?’

Guan Shan gives her a long look. ‘You’ve got my numbers for payment,’ he says, stepping off the slight podium before the mirror. ‘Take the credit out yourself. Add a tip.’

She grins in a show of beaming white teeth, swiping up the unused scraps of cloth from around his feet and slinging them over her shoulder. 

‘Such sweet words,’ she remarks. ‘See you next week?’

‘Maybe I’ll stop _accumulatin’_ things by then.’ 

‘Hopefully not!’

Guan Shan’s smile is rueful as he ducks out of the stall, an old hessian rug serving as its door. The rest of the stalls are much the same, makeshift rooms made out of cloth and tarpaulin, lit up with strings of solar lights and scavenged battery-operated bulbs. 

Some are open: jollof and slow-cooked chilli and mapo tofu permeates the air, layered lightly by the perfume of soap bars and incense smoking down to the burner; the rest are closed off to the heavy blend of smells behind rugs and beaded curtains made of limestone pebbles polished to a sheen. 

The land had been a prison once, before the New System came into place and the cells became open-air markets, echoing the ghost enclosures of solitary confinement and courtyards for the firing squads. Guan Shan isn’t old enough to remember; he’s glad of it.

The _souk_ is chaotic, he knows, but at least it smells nothing of death.

He’s passing a grain stall when his Holo flashes up before him, and Guan Shan swipes to see the message. 

**|| Zhan Zhengxi @Babylon, 22:09** Next client’s here. You on your way?

Guan Shan glances at the timestamp. They’re early. He heads for the east exit and waits to reply until he’s out of the perimeter of the _souk_ and he can see the half-uninterrupted skyline above him. Aerobikes flit silently along the road and he steps back a safe distance, catching the breeze as they fly. He spots the tower, squints, types out his response.

 **|| Mo Guan Shan @New Emirate Night Markets, 22:13** half a mile out - give me 10. keep them happy. 

**|| Zhan Zhengxi @Babylon, 22:13** Always do.

Guan Shan makes it in eight, catching a passing Aerotram to the tower and swiping his Holo as he steps off to pay the fare. The trams are air-conditioned, and the steady heat of New Emirate hits him like a furnace. He cranes his neck upwards.

The tower is one of the biggest in the cities, building up rather than out, a vertical megacomplex of artificial carbon-capture gardens and tower farms, interjected by office space and apartments. Evergreens and shrubs fill the balconies and Persian ivy smothers the exterior walls. Stepping into the lobby, an elevator lifts Guan Shan skywards to the fiftieth floor, and the doors open to a cool courtyard of dark tiling, the sound of water, and the false illusion of an open roof. A stone archway leads him through from the elevator shaft, where the name ‘Babylon’ has been chiselled into the keystone. 

Zhengxi stands behind the bar set across from the pond in the middle of the courtyard, backed by bottles of liquor and glass jars of loose tea and coffee. He’s pouring a stout cup of _xifengjiu_ when Guan Shan approaches, and nods in greeting. Discreetly, Zhengxi angles his head to the woman sitting alone at a low-table built into the floor set near the bar, cushions piled around her. 

The regulars are obvious: they sit at ease, drinking a little or not at all, talking freely with Zhengxi if the mood strikes them, who knows their order before asking. The newcomers are stiff and nervous, standing often and staring for indeterminate lengths of time at the fig trees clustered in the corner of the courtyard. 

‘Giana,’ Guan Shan says, and the woman’s brunette head lifts from her coffee, strong and black. ‘Ready when you are.’

She looks tired and worn out when she meets his gaze. Her smile, typically sharp, wavers. 

_One of those days,_ Guan Shan thinks—but his clients rarely meet with him in good spirits. 

She stands, brushes down invisible lint from her brown suit, the collar of her white shirt high and open at her throat. Her heels click noisily as she follows him through the courtyard, up a small set of steps, and then down through a long hallway, where rooms branch off into the cool darkness. 

‘New shirt?’ she asks from beside him. ‘It suits you.’

‘It’s new,’ he says. 

‘Old-New?’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘You think I look like I’ve got the credit for New-New?’

‘You don’t brush up too badly,’ Giana says, assessing his looks and the emerald earring hanging from his earlobe. ‘Your jewels might make people think otherwise.’

‘Eh,’ says Guan Shan. ‘They’re all vintage.’

Her look turns sly as they head down the hallway together. ‘Which is to say secondhand.’

‘Do I still get the company seal of approval?’ Guan Shan replies, changing the subject slightly. He knows she’ll open up to him soon enough, but he likes to test the waters to see what brings her here: business or pleasure.

She huffs in amusement. ‘My opinion doesn’t count for much there, these days.’ 

She doesn’t stiffen, Guan Shan notes. _Not a work issue._ He reaches the door to his suite and swipes his Holo against the handle, which opens with a soft whirr. 

‘Saw you made CFO on the news,’ Guan Shan says. ‘So I find that kinda hard to believe.’

He’d seen it on his Holo a few weeks back and knew then that a meeting would follow shortly after. Giana first came to him two years ago, a high-powered lawyer whose firm protected and worked with environmentalists based in the Reserve. It was how she’d met her husband, one of thousands of scientists working on rewilding and regenerating the land outside the city boundaries—limiting human presence, trying to undo the damage. They’d divorced years later, and he took custody of their two daughters. 

Guan Shan can already feel the sadness welling in his throat, empathy spilling from him when Giana can’t. He has a few clients like her: regulars who come for frequent emotional cleansing, for the catharsis of having another spill their tears for them in a way they don’t know how. _Top-up clients,_ Guan Shan calls them, those who come to him like a regular therapist rather than the clients with a deep-seated trauma he might see once and never again. 

‘My position doesn’t allow me to be emotional,’ she’d told Guan Shan before, but he knows it goes deeper than that. It always does.

‘Take a seat,’ he tells her, shutting the door to the suite behind her. Solar orbs hang in the air around the main space, crowded with palm trees and rattan furniture scattered with linen cushions. A set of granite steps lead towards the bedroom at the back of the suite, a small stream running alongside, the water lukewarm to the touch. 

Giana chooses her usual spot, a long rattan chaises longue, and doesn’t mind when Guan Shan takes the empty seat beside her. It’s easier like this: she can avoid eye contact if she wants to, and her hands busy themselves with the hot pot of Turkish coffee on the low table before them. She pours two cups. 

‘What happened?’ Guan Shan asks. ‘I figured no news was good news.’

She hands him one cup, and he nods his head in thanks. ‘I’ve been denied visitation,’ she says. ‘I had the virus when I was younger, and the Reserve officials think I could contaminate it. It’s bullshit—confidentially speaking, the science doesn’t back that claim, and the law was only put in place to appease the hypochondriacs. But Anthony isn’t protesting it.’ 

Guan Shan frowns. He’d heard about the new law, but it didn’t affect him, and he didn’t know many people in New Emirate who had any interest in moving to the Reserve. It was primitive and restricted—it was too natural. 

‘So you’ll only be able to see them…’

‘When they come to the city.’ She drinks her coffee, which Guan Shan knows is too hot, and looks down bleakly at her hands. ‘The courts are in his favour—like they always are when it comes to the Reserve. I should know, my firm encourages the system to work that way.’ She sets her jaw. ‘And he’s a man. He has what he wants, so he won’t fight for anything else.’ 

Guan Shan lets the slight run off him: he feels her anger, concentrates it into the heat of the ceramic cup between his palms. 

‘What about the girls?’ he asks quietly. ‘Wouldn’t think they’d be happy with the decision. Have you Holo’d them?’

‘They’re eight and ten. They have a forest in their back garden and find the city too cramped, which it is compared to the Reserve. They are—happy. They think they’re on a permanent holiday and—’

Her voice breaks, voice box fracturing, but nothing happens. Her eyes stay dry.

‘Here,’ says Guan Shan. He takes her cup and puts them both on the table, then takes her hands. She’s ten years older than him, but he holds her hands in his as if she’s a child. ‘Let me feel it for you. Let it go.’

Giana’s fingers tighten around his, her eyes squeeze shut. At Babylon, she pays to let herself be seen. To let herself be opened and examined and felt. Guan Shan feels it all and allows it to run through him. He can feel his nose stinging, his throat aching. He hears the stream, hears her breathing—allows the tears to fall. 

This is the job he knows he was designed for, his empathy drawing in their pain and releasing it. He has made a living out of catharsis. 

He cries for her, for her children, for what she’s lost, for that which she can’t find, for the empty nights above a crowded city and a too-quiet home. No laughter, no running footsteps, no small, warm bodies that she has made and knows to be hers. He feels what she sees, catches glimpses of her standing at the window of her office between meetings, imagining that she can see them. He sees a hand at the window pane, feels the tightness of her shoulders and her throat, swallowing it down.

Eventually, she releases his hands, and when Guan Shan draws her into focus, her brown eyes are bright and soft. Relieved. 

‘Thank you,’ she says thickly. They’re sitting closely, and her head falls to his shoulder. ‘I’ve needed this so much. I’ve tried not to, but—’

‘It’s what I’m here for,’ Guan Shan tells her.

‘I know,’ she whispers. ‘I know.’ 

Guan Shan can feel her breath on his neck, and he closes his eyes briefly when her lips follow. The line is an easy one to cross: a heady mix of relief and thankful desire, chasing it, crowding close to him for another taste. 

‘I’ve been so lonely,’ she whispers. She places a kiss to the underside of Guan Shan’s jaw, moves her head as if to meet his lips—and he pushes her gently away. 

‘Giana,’ he says evenly, his voice thick from crying. ‘Giana.’

It doesn’t take long. 

Clarity finds her, swift as an arrow, her slack expression dissipating. She falls back against the back of the chaise longue, a hand to her face. 

‘Shit,’ she mutters. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘It’s fine,’ Guan Shan tells her, dabbing at his wet cheeks with a handkerchief. He doesn’t want her to be embarrassed. He doesn’t want to spoil this. He’s had other clients fall into the same lull, overstepping the mark and never coming back. It doesn’t bother him. ‘I offer that—if you want. It’s a service I do for some of my clients, but there’s a fee.’

He knows it isn’t money that’s the problem when she shakes her head. 

‘I don’t want that,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to start falling into… that.’ 

‘Sex?’

 _‘Paid_ sex.’

‘It’s legal,’ says Guan Shan, knowing full well that she knows the law on this better than him. ‘It’s just another release.’

‘It doesn’t sit right with me,’ Giana says. ‘I don’t want to—I’m sorry.’

Guan Shan shrugs. ‘It’s fine,’ he says. He hands her the half-finished cup of coffee, still warm. ‘Drink this. It’ll help.’

‘Do you lace it?’ she asks, carefully teasing. ‘Is that why it always feels so good?’

‘I wish,’ Guan Shan admits. ‘Would save me the emotional turmoil.’

She sips, eyes him pointedly over the rim of the glass. ‘You don’t like doing this?’

‘It’s a job,’ he says. ‘Guess it’s like your work. You’re doin’ good but it’s still hard.’

‘Makes it worthwhile.’

Guan Shan’s lips quirk. ‘Sometimes.’

She makes a sound of thoughtful amusement and finishes her coffee. ‘I should go,’ she says, settling her empty cup on the table.

‘You paid for an hour,’ Guan Shan tells her. ‘You can stay. I’ll get more coffee, if you want? Promise not to lace it.’

She puts a hand on his knee. The gesture isn’t romantic or sexual. Guan Shan knows that those who visit him rarely know how to express themselves—the feeling isn’t there, or doesn’t surface naturally. They touch because it’s all the human in them knows.

When Giana leaves, Guan Shan stretches himself out on the chair and breathes deeply. It comes a little shakily at first, evening out in the next few minutes. 

He’s used to the breathlessness, the strange lucidness his meetings leave him to experience, serotonin and adrenaline and cortisol and all the rest of it working overdrive beneath the surface of his skin. Sometimes it feels like he’s run a marathon or spent an hour having sex when there’s been hardly more than a touch, body and mind in ceaseless occupation. It makes him unsteady on his feet, and he drinks two glasses of water before standing. 

He takes his time showering in the suite’s well-sized bathroom, attached to his private bedroom rather than the one reserved for clients, then wanders out into the courtyard where Zhengxi is cleaning down the bar for the evening. It’s a quiet night. Jian Yi sees his clients in the mornings, and Grey is on sabbatical. Qiu, who covers security from a private booth when a client meeting goes awry, would’ve clocked off the minute Giana left the building and Guan Shan marked the meeting down as finished on his Holo. 

It’s rare that it’s just the two of them. 

‘Good session?’ Zhengxi asks as Guan Shan comes over, barefoot and running a towel through his short hair. The stone floor is pleasantly cool beneath his feet. The courtyard makes him feel as if he’s in an oasis, some old Morroccan _riad_ from centuries ago, not a falsely manufactured outdoors, hundreds of feet in the air. 

‘Was alright,’ says Guan Shan, sliding into one of the bar stools and reaching for the _xifengjiu_ bottle Zhan Zhengxi has kept out knowingly. ‘She got a bit handsy.’

Zhengxi quirks a brow. 

‘Nothin’ I couldn’t handle,’ says Guan Shan. ‘She’s had a rough time of it. Stressful job, custody battles. All that bullshit.’

‘It isn’t your job to handle it,’ Zhengxi says. 

Guan Shan snorts, pouring himself a cup. ‘It’s exactly my job,’ he says. ‘It’s why they pay me the big bucks.’

‘You don’t need the credit anymore.’

Guan Shan lifts the cup to his mouth and swallows. He winces, but the drink is smooth. ‘That all it comes down to?’ he asks. 

Zhengxi shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Thought you always knew what people wanted. That’s _your_ skill.’

‘I don’t put myself in a position where I have to give it to them.’

Guan Shan points a finger at him. ‘You said it yourself. I don’t need the money—I don’t _have_ to do _shit_ for anyone anymore.’

‘Mo Guan Shan,’ Zhengxi muses aloud, wiping a cloth around the rim of a glass until it shines. ‘Softening people’s cold hearts out of free will. Who knew you were such a prince?’

‘Yeah, right,’ Guan Shan mutters. ‘Wouldn’t have to be if everyone who came in wasn’t so fuckin’ emotionally constipated.’ 

It makes Zhengxi laugh—‘What does that make you, a laxative?’—and the sound stops Guan Shan from pouring another glass. He doesn’t need it; it clouds his judgment and turns his mood sour. Instead, he screws the cap onto the bottle and holds it out to Zhengxi, who takes it with a nod of thanks. 

‘Speaking of,’ says Zhengxi. ‘We had a booking request come through earlier—for you.’

‘You didn’t approve it, yeah?’

‘I know the rules,’ Zhengxi says. ‘You pick your clients.’ He hands across a thin Holo tablet. ‘Here. Take a look.’ 

Guan Shan’s eyes skim the screen. The details are vague—they don’t even leave a name. Guan Shan catches on a particular word that suggests the client knows exactly what they’re in for by coming to Babylon. 

‘Referral,’ Guan Shan says, locking his gaze with Zhan Zhengxi’s, and then they both say, at the same time, ‘Rich bastard.’

‘They’re the hardest, aren’t they?’

‘Depends,’ says Guan Shan, frowning down at the Holo. ‘Either they think they’re the most hard-done-by fucker the world’s ever seen—or they’re so shut-off to themselves they’re like…’

‘Yeah,’ says Zhengxi, when Guan Shan can’t put the rest into words. 

Sometimes after a meeting he needs a shower and a stiff drink and he’s ready to roll for the next one. Sometimes a client can put him out for days, wading through a landfill of repression that knocks Guan Shan like getting caught in an avalanche. 

The worst was a two-month depression that he wasn’t sure he’d come out of, and at nights he saw yellow eyes and a silver head bowing over him in sleep, the pain chasing him there too. _He_ had been one of the latter—rich, emotionally repressed. Pulling the locked-down feeling from She Li had been like walking through a hallway of knives to get to. It had been like Guan Shan was wrapping his hand around the bare blade of She Li’s soul and slicing open his palms just to get to it.

‘Referred by who?’ Guan Shan asks. 

‘Doesn’t say. Just that they’d like an appointment as soon as possible.’ He adds, ‘They’ve offered to pay double.’

Guan Shan’s eyes narrow. ‘Think they can buy me huh?’

‘Maybe they really need your help. Maybe they’re desperate.’

‘You just wanna fuckin’ know who it is, don’t you?’

Zhengxi steps back from the bar. ‘I admit, I’m curious. We’ll know who it is when we run the first ID checks. But you’re right—it’s your decision. And it’s late.’

Guan Shan glances at the Holo. He’s right: it’s past midnight. He waves at Zhengxi. 

‘You head home. I’ll lock up.’

‘You sure?’ Zhengxi asks carefully, his blue-eyed gaze sliding between Guan Shan, the Holo tablet, and the bottle of _xifengjiu_ he'd taken and set aside. 

‘Yeah, go. Fuck off. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He doesn’t look up as Zhengxi leaves, clapping him briefly on the shoulder. He helps himself to a glass of tap water when he hears the ding of the elevator and knows he’s alone, his stare vacant out across Babylon’s courtyard. 

Zhengxi already knows he’ll say yes. He knows, even as he told Guan Shan it was his decision, that the decision is already made. 

_Maybe they’re desperate._

‘Yeah,’ Guan Shan mutters, finishing his water and wishing it was something stronger. ‘Aren’t we all?

**///**

Guan Shan agrees to see the stranger in a week. This time, he makes no prior shopping trips to the _souk_ when he receives him; instead, he gets there an hour early and wears his old-new green shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His red hair is kept artfully bedraggled, sticking up at odd ends from where it’s been washed, and he wears a pair of brown slacks that fit close to his legs. He keeps his feet bare. 

‘Fresh,’ says Zhengxi, taking a look at him. 

‘That a compliment?’ Guan Shan asks. 

‘You should take it as one,’ says the guy at the bar. 

Guan Shan considers him. Greying, mid-forties, loose suit, light brown skin and a closely shaved head. Not the impression of the stranger he’d had on Zhengxi’s Holo request. He looks to Zhengxi. 

‘This isn’t…’

Zhengxi shakes his head, and it’s then that Guan Shan catches sight of the drink on the bar and the placid smile on the man’s face. A Mellow Yellow, something to soften the inevitable spiral of despair that follows after Jian Yi’s meetings, which are sessions an hour long or more and go like taking a healthy dose of molly. 

Guan Shan’s seen the crash before, clients wandering ecstatic and delirious through the courtyard, then blank-faced and hollowed out by the time they step into the elevator. Guan Shan can’t get his head around Jian Yi’s skills or why people would waste their credit on a session, but he knows it sells. Other than the sudden cliff-drop in serotonin, there are no side effects—no rotten teeth or cardiac arrest. No real addiction.

Zhengxi holds up a cocktail shaker, sloshing with liquid. ‘Another?’ he asks the man at the bar.

‘May as well,’ the guy sighs. ‘My wife would rather think I’m smoked-out than suicidal.’ 

_Wife,_ Guan Shan thinks, mouth twisting in distaste, but he says nothing.

‘You work here?’ the man asks Guan Shan while Zhengxi pours him another drink. 

‘Yeah,’ says Guan Shan. ‘Late nights, usually.’ 

‘Are you—like Jian Yi?’

Guan Shan’s eyes flick to Zhengxi, who is watching the interaction play out with silent, nonparticipating amusement. 

‘Depends what you mean,’ Guan Shan replies. 

The guy smiles, bobs his head from side to side, figuring out how to navigate this without too much awkwardness—without overstepping a boundary both Guan Shan and Zhengxi are waiting for him to cross. They don’t expect their clients to know the etiquette of sex work when they’re cheating on their spouses. 

‘Do you, ah, give people that _feeling?’_

Guan Shan quirks a brow. He gestures to Zhengxi’s cocktail. ‘Like bein’ high?’ 

The man nods. He sips from the glass through a metal straw. 

‘No,’ Guan Shan says. ‘It’s a different… relief.’

He swallows. ‘Like what?’

Guan Shan and Zhengxi exchange another glance. Eventually, Guan Shan props the base of his spine against the bar and settles both elbows on the surface.

‘You ever been bitten by a snake?’ Guan Shan starts. He hears Zhengxi cough from behind him, and ignores it. 

‘A snake? In New Emirate?’ The man chuckles nervously. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘Well, it’s kinda like that. You got all this poison lurkin’ inside you that you can’t get out, festerin’, infectin’ your blood—your mind. Your heart. Makes it difficult to see straight sometimes. Sometimes it makes you feel empty.’ Guan Shan shrugs. ‘I know how to siphon it out—put my mouth right on the wound and just… suck.’

The man splutters on his drink. Yellow liquid splatters down his chin and onto his shirt. 

‘Oh, my,’ he says. 

‘Here,’ Guan Shan says, keeping his face expressionless, handing him a cloth napkin to dap against his shirt.

‘Another drink?’ Zhan Zhengxi asks. 

‘No, no,’ the man says, getting clumsily to his feet. There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead. ‘I think I’ve had enough of just about everything today.’ He steps back, gestures to Zhengxi. ‘You’ve got my credit details?’

‘You’ve already been charged.’

‘Wonderful. And my next appointment—’

‘Booked in. You’ll get an email as usual.’

‘You look after your clients, don’t you?’ the man asks with a nervous chuckle. He has pointedly stopped looking at Guan Shan, who prods at the green hoop piercing fixed through his septum. 

‘See you next time,’ says Zhengxi, putting a towel over his shoulder and offering a slight wave as the man steps into the elevator across the courtyard. When the elevator doors slide to a shut, Zhengxi shakes his head. ‘Poor Jian Yi.’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘He fuckin’ loves it.’

‘He does,’ Zhengxi agrees solemnly. He’s about to say something more when a notification rings out on the Holo tablet behind the bar, and Zhengxi’s eyebrows lift. He reaches across for the nameless man’s empty cup to wash it and says, ‘Yours has just got in the elevator.’

For some reason, it makes Guan Shan’s heart quicken. He straightens, smooths down his shirt. 

‘Can you send him through? I’m gonna wait in the suite.’

‘You don’t want to greet him personally?’ Zhengxi asks, head cocked to one side.

‘Not this one.’

‘Alright,’ says Zhengxi, sounding curious. ‘Holo me if you need anything.’

‘I know the rules,’ says Guan Shan, moving towards the back hallway. 

‘I know you do,’ Zhengxi says from the bar. He points to the elevator, where the numbers are starting to rise. They’re ten floors away. ‘But they might not.’

**///**

Guan Shan was right to have his reservations. Jian Yi’s client, spilling his drink over himself at the bar, was nothing close to the man standing before Guan Shan now. He offers his name freely, and the pieces start to click into place. 

He Tian. The He Family. The real estate firm that’s bound by blood owning half the apartments and offices in New Emirate, and one of the biggest investors in the research taking place in regenerating the world outside of it. 

He Tian looks like a He, talks like one, too. His accent is clipped and polished, any drawl purely intentional, and he speaks like he moves: sharply cognisant, letting a hand trail lazily over the back of Guan Shan’s rattan sofa purely to draw the eye. He smells like cigarettes and cloves, and his suit is nothing like the eccentric crafts from the _souk_ —like very few things that now exist in the New Emirate, part of the Sustainable Decree placed upon the city, it’s something _new._ New-New.

A He wearing regenerated hand-me-downs? Inconceivable, perhaps, but then Guan Shan’s never seen one up close. He never expected the youngest heir to walk through the doors of Babylon, either.

‘You looked shocked,’ says He Tian, when Guan Shan steps back to let him in. He wanders through without invitation, eyeing the stone ceiling, the stream that runs at the edge of the room, the outside brought in. Guan Shan can’t tell what he thinks of it. He hates that he suddenly wants to know the opinion of a total stranger, and considers silently that they must be the same age.

‘I guess I shouldn’t be,’ says Guan Shan. He taps the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘Rich people need all the help they can get up here.’

He Tian takes it how Guan Shan thinks he should: he laughs. He suddenly takes note of Guan Shan, sitting on the rattan chair with his fingers interlocked in his lap, watching He Tian pace and learning his new surroundings with a keenly dark gaze.

‘Hm,’ says He Tian, quietly. ‘So how do you do this? How do we do this?’

Guan Shan leans back. ‘Usually I ask what you wanna get out of this. What made you wanna come here—to me.’

He Tian smirks. 

‘You can sit, if you want,’ says Guan Shan. 

‘I’m happy to stand,’ He Tian replies. At all times, he keeps the door directly across from him. An easy exit. 

_Interesting,_ Guan Shan thinks.

‘Usually I can just, like, _touch_ someone,’ he explains. ‘Makes it easier. I get glimpses of what’s goin’ on in your head and it hits me.’ He almost smiles to himself. ‘It siphons out from you through me.’

‘Like sucking out poison.’

Guan Shan pauses. ‘Yeah,’ he says tightly. ‘Just like that.’

He Tian’s expression is impossible to decipher. In the silence that follows, he moves with five exact fluid movements to Guan Shan’s side and settles himself down, one leg hooked over the other, the fine cut of his suit reshaping itself around long limbs. Guan Shan realises he’s been holding his breath. 

‘D’you wanna tell me why you’re here?’ asks Guan Shan.

He Tian’s lips purse. ‘Isn’t that for you to figure out?’

The comment irritates Guan Shan. It’s fraught with arrogant cageyness, too much wry masculinity to admit to honesty or openness. Guan Shan hasn’t dealt with someone like this in a long while. It would be easier if He Tian’s handsomeness wasn’t mostly devastating. No, the undeniable fact of it almost irritates Guan Shan more.

‘I’ll see what you’ve been through,’ he replies after a moment. ‘Won’t necessarily know what triggered you makin’ this appointment. They’re not always the same thing.’

He Tian arches a brow. ‘And do we… hold hands for this?’

‘You got a problem with it?’

‘I’ve paid a sex worker to help me with my emotonal impotency,’ says He Tian dryly. ‘I think I can manage a little hand holding.’

After a minute Guan Shan says, ‘It does make it easier.’

He doesn’t wait for He Tian. He puts both hands out, his knuckles bordered with metal and jewels. He Tian’s hands, in contrast, are bare. It makes them longer, bigger. His nails are neatly filed. His palms seem to swallow Guan Shan’s whole, warm and callussed. The familiarity of his touch makes Guan Shan feel uneasy. He Tian is looking at their joined hands with a strange expression.

‘Close your eyes,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Just—let yourself feel what you’ve been feelin’. Think about what you usually think about. Don’t try and hold it back. Let it come forward.’

He Tian closes his eyes, and Guan Shan watches him nod slightly. His mouth has gone tight at the corners. Satisfied, Guan Shan closes his eyes, too.

At first, there’s nothing. 

In stages, he begins to picture a wall. 

He Tian’s, it seems, is made of stone, and after a few minutes Guan Shan realises he’s standing on the perimeter of some polar vortex, permafrost miles beneath his bare feet. The coldness is unbearable, and snow falls about him in a blizzard. He looks at the wall with an undeniably certainty that he can neither go through or over it. He’s blocked out. 

And then there’s a shift. Something trembles. Guan Shan watches as a single stone block starts to shake in its structure, loosens itself, then falls to the ground with a soundless thud. 

A soft plume of snow billows up like dust, and a strange light falls through the empty space where the block used to sit. The wall still stands. Distantly, he can hear a strange whistling sound, like wind rushing through his ears. The hands he holds—He Tian’s hands—are still warm.

Guan Shan recenters himself. The wall. Slowly, Guan Shan begins to move towards it. He faces no resistance; he feels the cold on his bare feet but no burning pain of frostbite. Guan Shan takes a step, standing on the fallen brick so that he can level his gaze with the window through the wall.

He stares. 

He can’t shield himself in time—the blizzard pummels against the wall. 

It implodes like it’s made of sawdust, mortar and ice flying everywhere. Guan Shan falls back, flailing. His head smashes against the ground. 

The blizzard runs over him. 

_A ship, burning on the water, burnt hair and nails. He Cheng’s shouting somewhere—_

_No handle, no lock, no escape. The cupboard is too dark for my eyes to adjust to a light that isn’t there. It took seven hours last time and Father will beat me if I don’t hold it—_

_The weight is pleasant, the cool metal of a gun in my palm. A good shot. I’ll aim true—_

_There’s a body on the banks, covered in a white sheet. It looks small. Her hair is dark and long. I have her face—_

_Something fires, and I can feel it before I see it. A fucking mess. The bullet burns through my shoulder like a fucking—_

Guan Shan reels back, wrenching himself from the memories. His knees hit the stone floor of the suite and black spots swim in his eyes. He staggers on the floor, gasping, trying not to wretch. He can feel the ghost of a bullet in his shoulder that was never his to bear. He never fired a gun, never saw the body. _It wasn’t me,_ he tells himself in a panic

His vision blurs, eyes stinging. His face is wet, feeling sore and swollen to the touch. 

He can hardly get the words out. 

‘Get— _Get out.’_

He Tian is on his feet, staring at Guan Shan with eyes that have gone too wide, whites all the way around. 

‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ He Tian whispers. ‘It’s working.’

 _‘Out!’_ Guan Shan cries. 

The door flies open across the room, and suddenly Qiu is there, crouching down at Guan Shan’s side. His hands move quickly, checking for wounds, for injuries. He straightens. 

‘You need to leave,’ he tells He Tian. _‘Now.’_

There’s movement, some commotion. Voices. Guan Shan doesn’t know how long it takes before He Tian is eventually taken from the room and Qiu comes back to find him with his cheek pressed against the knotted pattern of the rattan sofa, the glossed wicker plaits digging into his skin. He draws his knees up, tries to ignore the sharp ache in his shoulder where a bullet never embedded itself. 

It wasn’t him. He wasn’t there.

He can’t stop crying. 

‘It wasn’t him,’ he whispers when Qiu crouches down at his side, pressing a cool cloth to his forehead. ‘It wasn’t his fault, but—’

‘I know,’ says Qiu. ‘I know who he is.’

Guan Shan blinks blearily, lifts his head. ‘You do?’

‘His family own this building. I—used to work for them. His brother actually.’ Qiu shakes his head. ‘They’re not the kind of people whose minds you want to go rooting through. I didn’t realise that’s who you were seeing.’

‘It’s my fault.’ 

They both look up. Zhengxi is standing in the doorway, the blue glimmer of his eyes gone dull. 

‘I should’ve done more thorough checks. He had no background—No record of—’

‘He wouldn’t,’ says Qiu. ‘It wasn’t your fault. The Hes are well-established on paper.’

Qiu helps Guan Shan as he tries to get to his feet. His throat feels raw as sandpaper, and the exhaustion washes over him in droves. He is so very, very tired, a free-flow river gone suddenly dry as a desert. He wants to sleep. 

‘I’ve got another client to see—’ he starts.

‘I’ve cancelled them,’ says Zhengxi quietly. ‘I freed up your schedule for a few days like last time.’

 _Last time,_ Guan Shan thinks. He sees silver hair and yellow eyes and shakes his head. This is nothing like last time. He can feel the coldness of the wall, can smell the burnt body, as if it’s been laid out on the floor before him. This isn’t like last time—it’s not even close.

**///**

He doesn't see another client for two weeks. It doesn’t drag him down like before—doesn’t feel like he’s being buried alive. This is something burning, something so sharply painful he can’t lose focus on it. It stays with him, an acupuncture trauma that marks him with needles all over. He wakes crying, sobs until the last of it ebbs from him like a toxin. 

Like a poison. 

He doesn’t sweat it all out; fragments of it stay with him, an infection that festers each time he thinks he’s cleared it. 

At night, She Li’s eyes are replaced by He Tian’s. His smile is He Tian’s wry smirk. His hands are He Tian’s, reaching out to him on the floor, features tight with shocked concern. Guan Shan’s memory has replaced one nightmare for another.

The difference is this: he knows it. He’s aware of it. There is no weighted, suffocating blanket keeping him down, a four-walled room with no door or window like in He Tian’s childhood memory. This is escapable. Guan Shan has self-awareness, the cognisance to know he’s hurting, and why—and because of who.

**///**

‘I’ll pay triple. Quadruple. Just get me in with him again—’

‘Stop calling, Mr He. He won’t offer you his services.’

‘I can—’

‘It’s not about the credit. If you don’t stop calling, we’ll block your number. This is your last warning.’

**///**

‘He did something to me, Zhan Zhengxi.’

‘Mr He—’ 

‘Took something from me I’ve been carrying for—I don’t fucking know. Forever. I need him to do it again.’

‘Mr He—’

‘Just one more session. Just once more.’

_‘Mr He—’_

Guan Shan leans across the bar and snatches the Holo from Zhengxi’s hand. He puts it to his ear. ‘Talk to me and leave my colleagues the fuck alone when they tell you to, alright? We operate on a no bullshit policy and you’d better pay attention to it.’

On the other end, he can hear He Tian breathe out something like relief.

They’ve been on each other’s minds.

He Tian says, ‘You changed me, Mo Guan Shan.’

‘You fucked me up.’

‘I have that effect on people,’ He Tian replies. ‘But I don’t know how to do anything otherwise. I need your help.’

Guan Shan turns away from the bar. He wanders over to the cove of fig trees on the outskirts of the pond and speaks in a low voice. He knows Zhengxi’s eyes are following him, watching him, waiting to interrupt if he needs to. 

‘What you need,’ Guan Shan says, ‘is a therapist.’

It makes He Tian laugh. ‘You think I didn’t try that before I came to you? All I found were dead ends. They said I was too _self-aware._ ’

Guan Shan glares at a purple fruit, hanging from the boughs, and says, ‘How terrible for you.’

‘Please,’ says He Tian. ‘Let me see you.’

‘Or what?’ says Guan Shan. ‘I know your family owns this building. You gonna shut us down if I say no? ‘Cause so far you’re not doin’ great at leavin’ us the fuck alone like Zhan Zhengxi told you to.’

‘I know something worth chasing when I see it.’

 _Like a hunting ground,_ Guan Shan thinks. He turns. There must be something on his face, because when he looks at Zhengxi, the barman shakes his head. 

‘I’ll meet you,’ Guan Shan says. ‘But it’s in the next hour or nothin’.’

Zhengxi has started to walk quickly towards him.

‘I’m already outside,’ says He Tian. ‘See you in five.’

When Guan Shan hands the Holo to Zhengxi, his mouth is pinched into a flat, disapproving line. He has spent two weeks checking on Guan Shan, bringing him food, encouraging him to go outside—or in the least to the parklands on Level 14. In a matter of seconds, Guan Shan has taken to Zhengxi’s carefully sewn sutures with a rusty hacksaw. 

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Zhengxi asks. 

Guan Shan grunts. ‘I know my limits.’

Zhengxi gives him a look. ‘I’ll call Qiu. He should be on stand-by.’

Guan Shan shrugs. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘I have a feelin’ it’s gonna be okay.’ 

They both look over as the elevator whirrs, starting to rise. It starts to lift from the ground floor, and Guan Shan swallows. 

‘You don’t have to do this,’ says Zhengxi quietly, careful not to press too hard. ‘You don’t have to help everyone.’

‘I know,’ says Guan Shan. 

The elevator dings.

**///**

‘You can sit there,’ Guan Shan says. 

‘You won’t be joining me this time?’

‘I don’t want a repeat.’

‘Will the distance matter?’ He Tian asks. ‘Last time, you said that you don’t have to be touching someone—’

‘Right. Just makes it easier. With you…’

_I’m not sure any of it’s gonna matter._

From the chaise longue, He Tian inclines his head towards Guan Shan, who stands on the other side of the room. A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. 

‘Would you like a protective suit?’ he teases.

Guan Shan scowls. He has his arms folded and shifts from side to side. For a moment, he considers the cut of He Tian’s suit. It’s near identical to the cloth he wore last time, only the slightest difference in colour, in the pattern of stitching. The buttons are different, too. Guan Shan pictures a whole room of dark-coloured suits made of newly harvested organic cotton. 

‘Is there more?’ he asks. ‘What I saw—How much more is there?’

‘There’s twenty-three years of it. GIve or take a few months.’

Guan Shan clenches his jaw. Usually, there’s a singular instance. A glimpse of unshed trauma. Maybe a few weeks of stress and anxiety. He’s never had to rifle through a whole life of it. 

‘I don’t think you get it,’ Guan Shan says quietly. ‘Everythin’ you’ve ever felt—I’ve gotta feel it too. I can take it out of you, but it’s gotta run through me first.’

‘So you won’t do it.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Guan Shan mutters.

‘You didn’t have to,’ He Tian says simply. 

‘I told you to see a therapist. So you can work through it yourself—so I don’t have to go through it.’

‘And I told you it doesn’t work on me. I need something else.’ He Tian’s smile is thin. ‘Drugs and alcohol only work so long.’

Guan Shan nearly tells him to book in with Jian Yi, but He Tian isn’t looking for that—no quick fix. The thought of He Tian’s mood plummeting after a session with Jian Yi fills Guan Shan with dread. 

‘Is there nothing you can do?’ He Tian asks. After a moment, he gets to his feet. ‘Is there nothing I can do?’

Guan Shan eyes him suspiciously. ‘Like what?’

He Tian begins walking closer. Briefly, Guan Shan thinks of calling for Qiu, having He Tian removed from the building before this devolves into a repeat of the last time He Tian was here. But instead he only watches him come forward, the dark, lean shape of him cat-like as he approaches. Guan Shan knows he’s being hunted down. He knows, for some reason, that he will do nothing about it. He’s attracted to him, and the pull of it is fierce.

 _Remember last time,_ a voice tries to tell him. _The shaking. The shock. The attack._

He Tian says, ‘Like distracting you. Putting your mind on something else.’

Guan Shan takes a step backwards and his shoulders collide with the stone wall at his back. He could run to one of the bedrooms, lock himself in the bathroom. If he’s quick, he might make it to the door and out into the hallway. He can feel his pulse thudding at his wrists. He does nothing. 

‘You’d have to pay for that,’ he says. ‘There’s a fee.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ says He Tian. 

It stumps him. Want? The concept is an interesting one. Does he want to fuck strangers? Does he want to give them the emotional and physical release they can’t get through anything else? He doesn't know. He doesn’t _not_ want to—the choice has always been his—but has he ever felt attracted to a client enough that he’d make the choice if money weren’t involved?

He considers He Tian in the fine cut of his suit, wealth and good looks an inescapable fact that seeps from his pores, a specimen of good breeding and social advantage. Guan Shan has spent two weeks going to sleep and thinking of He Tian’s smile. 

_Shit._

‘Take my mind off everything,’ He Tian murmurs, ‘and I’ll take your mind off it, too.’

‘You can’t,’ Guan Shan says, swallowing. ‘You don’t know how strong it is.’

He Tian chuckles quietly. ‘I’ve lived with it. I know how to mute it.’

‘Is that right, huh?’

‘It is. I do it just like this.’

He goes to his knees before Guan Shan can stop him. The wall is at his back, the ridges of his spine pressing into the wall, and He Tian is undoing the buttons of Guan Shan’s trousers.

‘Shit,’ he whispers. 

‘Take it from me,’ He Tian murmurs. His hand is warm and dry, a firm pressure as it wraps itself around Guan Shan’s cock. He bows his head, brings his lips to the tip. ‘Please.’

‘This isn’t—’ Guan Guan groans, breaking off. _This isn’t how we do things._

‘Do you want me to stop?’ He Tian asks. His breath is hot, and Guan Shan’s skin is oversensitised. He feels every trembling shiver as He Tian breathes out, shallow but even. When he looks down, He Tian is looking at him with such dark invitation that Guan Shan’s legs feel like they might fall out beneath him.

The thought comes of its own accord: _How fucking beautiful._

Dark eyes wide with darker promise, and Guan Shan doesn’t want to tip into the abyss of He Tian’s mind. He can’t go there again. 

‘No,’ he says. ‘Keep goin’.’

And he closes his eyes. 

He Tian was right: he takes Guan Shan’s mind off it. Guan Shan knows when his mind slips into He Tian’s. There’s a transition of otherness. An inescapable crossing of a barrier, from one sphere into the next. 

But there’s no Antarctic wall. No impenetrable fortress through which to look. No window through which the blizzard can force him to his knees. No plague of memory. Guan Shan feels suspended between it: the cool darkness of He Tian’s mind, the hot pleasure between his thighs and He Tian’s insistent mouth. 

He Tian knows what he’s doing. He lets Guan Shan’s hand tighten to a fist as it locks into his neatly groomed hair. He lets Guan Shan jerk his hips forward while half-finished sounds escape from the back of his throat. 

Memories come at him in flashes: half-formed and incoherent, like a conversation taking place in another room, muffled by a door. As if he’s listening to announcements on the Aerotram, half-asleep and unfocused. 

He lets them flow through him. He knows, on some level, that the memories are unkind. But he lets them go. He can’t let himself look too closely at them or he’ll see them, some horror—some ghost-like presence in the corner of the room that will become corporeal if he concentrates too hard.

‘Focus on me,’ he hears, and looks down to see He Tian pressing a kiss to his thigh. Guan Shan’s trousers are pooled around his ankles, and He Tian is pristine in his suit. Guan Shan’s aware that this is unprofessional—it’s uncontrolled, unmonitored. _Unplanned._ He’s already resigned himself to it. 

There’s wetness on his cheeks, and he spots the bright glimmer of relief to He Tian’s eyes like he’s been hooked up to an IV and the fentanyl has just started to hit. 

‘Close your eyes,’ He Tian instructs. For some reason, Guan Shan listens to him, indulges in the hot pressure of He Tian’s tongue stroking across the length of his cock, lapping at his skin like he’s known him always, the vein that runs through him, the spot at his base where, with enough pressure, his eyes roll back in his head and it’s all he can do not to fall to his knees. 

His rings catch in He Tian’s hair—and he doesn’t know if the groan he feels vibrate from He Tian’s lips is pleasure or pain or both—but it sends him. 

Somewhere, there’s the flash of death. A body burning on a pyre. The cold air of hallowed grounds beneath his feet. He Tian’s mouth is bringing him to orgasm and Guan Shan is treading through the unsanctified darkness of his memories—his sin, inflicted and brought upon him. His body shakes and a dark smoke cloud seems to pour from his mouth.

He hears himself swear. 

His spine bows over.

He spills down the back of He Tian’s throat, and He Tian swallows obligingly, without reservation, lips hollowing. Guan Shan hears the room’s silence, the sound of running water, his own breath. He Tian pulls off, leaving a sweat-slick sheen, and licks his lips. 

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, getting to his feet.

 _What?_ Guan Shan thinks, baulking when He Tian brushes a thumb across his cheekbone. It comes away wet.

He’s crying.

It’s over.

‘Shit, sorry,’ he mutters, swiping at his cheeks. He doesn’t know why he’s apologising; it’s how it’s always been. It’s how it’s _meant_ to be—his emotional outpour and their release. It’s how he was designed. He shuffles back into his clothes, breathes a quiet sigh of relief when He Tian steps back to let him pass. 

He pours himself a drink from the caddy near the sofa, his hand trembling. This is nothing like it had been the first time. This feels like a hangover and Guan Shan knows how to drink those away. 

He takes a sip, winces.

When he looks over, He Tian is staring at him. His lips are a dark red, his eyes hooded. He’s hard, but makes no move to touch himself—or have Guan Shan do it for him—as if unconcerned with it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Guan Shan asks, lifting his glass to his lips. ‘Not like you expected?’

He Tian shakes his head. ‘No,’ he murmurs. Then he asks, ‘What _are_ you?’

Guan Shan puts the drink down. ‘You’re only askin’ that now?’

The question prompts something. He Tian comes forward in quick, even strides. Guan Shan finishes off his bourbon and tries to pretend the sudden closeness doesn’t intimidate him. Steadily, he pours He Tian a glass, too. 

He Tian takes it but doesn’t drink, and Guan Shan shuffles beneath the intensity of his gaze. 

‘I feel… I feel weightless.’

‘It’s not temporary,’ says Guan Shan. ‘It’ll last—but only as long as you don’t go through more shit that stops you feelin’. You’d have to come back for anythin’ new.’

‘That feels guaranteed,’ says He Tian with wry grimness, and at this he does take a drink, a long swallow that empties half his glass and makes the ice crackle against his teeth. Guan Shan can’t stop thinking about him chasing down the taste of his cum with whisky. He watches He Tian’s throat work and looks away. 

‘When did you decide to combine the two?’ He Tian asks. ‘Emotional support and sex?’

Guan Shan shrugs. ‘’Cause usually they’re the same thing.’ 

‘Among the right people,’ He Tian allows. 

Guan Shan nods. ‘And—in the beginnin’—I could make more money from it.’

‘To do what with? Buy yourself emeralds?’ He Tian drinks the rest of his whisky and puts his empty glass on the caddy. With a flicker of his eyes that quickly scan Guan Shan’s adorned body, he says, ‘Not that I’m complaining about the view.’

‘I’m gonna move to the Reserve.’

A moment passes. 

‘Really,’ says He Tian. ‘That’s—You want to leave the city?’

‘Wanted to move out for a long while.’

‘And there’s nothing here good enough to make you stay?’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘It’s only the other side of the wall. Not like I can’t come visit.’

‘That’s not what I hear.’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. ‘What d’you mean?’

He Tian considers him for a few silent moments and then says, ‘There is talk of making the divide permanent. A choice in adolescence—New Emirate or the Reserve.’ He adds, ‘There’s no guarantee you’d be anywhere near the wall. The Reserve spans a thousand-mile radius.’

‘How d’you know all this?’ Guan Shan asks quietly. 

He Tian gives him a particular look, and Guan Shan’s mind flicks quickly through the smoke-like glimpses of He Tian’s memory. Power, knowledge, influence. He Tian’s family have as much control over the boundary lines as anyone. Guan Shan hasn’t understood the importance of the man standing before him until now. He swallows.

 _You just sucked me off,_ he thinks. _I wanted you to._

‘I want to see you again,’ says He Tian. ‘It would be… quite a shame if you were to leave.’

Guan Shan frowns. He’s vaguely aware that they’re both standing across from each other, separated only by a few bottles of liquor and two empty glasses with ice melting slowly at the bottom. The distance feels deliberate—priggish, somehow, after everything. Like He Tian has chosen where to place himself, and everything before was a matter of accidental circumstance. 

Guan Shan clears his throat and says, ‘Don’t think you’ll be needin’ my services again. Unless…’ He chews on his lip. ‘If you want the physical stuff—more of it, I mean—you’ll need to get checked, and I’m not an open door for that kinda thing—’

‘Not for that,’ He Tian interrupts. ‘I want to see _you_. Not this.’

The look Guan Shan gives him is unimpressed. ‘I don’t do personas. This is me.’

A muscle jumps at the side of He Tian’s mouth and he replies, ‘I don’t want to see you for sex. Or for _therapy_. Or because I want something—’

‘We always want somethin’.’

‘Then what I want is you. Without a purpose. Without you doing something for me.’ He Tian runs a hand through his hair. ‘I want to spend time with you—is that enough? Am I—fuck, am I being clear? I want to be clear.’

‘What for?’ Guan Shan asks suspiciously. ‘You don’t even know me.’

He Tian laughs, the sound warm and deep like the bourbon that slips down Guan Shan’s throat and pools in his belly. He wants to hear it again. 

‘Sweetheart,’ says He Tian. ‘That’s the whole point. I want to.’ He puts an arm out, and his palm just reaches to cup Guan Shan’s cheek. His voice is terrifyingly soft: ‘Please,’ he says, ‘Let me see you at least once more without making you cry.’

///

**Six months later.**

‘You’ll be late,’ says Zhengxi. ‘You’ll miss the train.’

Guan Shan waves him off, hurring past the bar, up the steps, and along the darkened hallway that leads to his suite. He’s tired, his eyes sore from a sleepless night and his mouth dry, but everything’s arranged.

Giana’s already waiting for him when he opens the door, breathing a little hard. She stands. She looks both younger and older when he looks at her, but he knows nothing has changed. 

‘Ready?’ he asks her. 

‘Are you sure about this?’ she whispers. ‘What if they don’t let me—’

‘They will,’ Guan Shan says. ‘I promise. C’mon, we’re late. Have you got your things?’

Giana picks up a duffel bag from the floor and slings it over her shoulder. It’s all she has, but Guan Shan doesn’t question it. He understands the need not to be burdened with pointless things. Downstairs, he has only a backpack and a holdall he can sling across his chest without too much weight. In the Reserve, no one needs much. 

Giana comes forward, eyes flickering to his uncertainly, then she passes him and steps out into the hallway. Guan Shan’s glance around the suite feels empty; the walls hold memory and emotion more than a single soul could bear.

He closes the door. 

Behind the bar, Zhengxi only nods at him. He has said his farewells to Grey and Jian Yi already, an uncomfortable, tearful parting that Guan Shan didn’t allow to linger. He doesn’t like the aura of euphoria that Jian Yi carries about him at all times, a helpless effervescence that gives Guan Shan a headache and makes him feel uncertain of his own emotions. In the courtyard, he glances once at the grove of fig trees, at the pond in the middle of the room, at the set of tables and chairs where he will no longer greet clients.

The thought thrills him. 

He holds Zhengxi’s eye until the elevator doors slide shut, Giana practically vibrating at his side, and his heart picks up slightly when He Tian comes into view on the ground floor. 

‘Ready?’ he asks Guan Shan and Giana.

Giana looks at He Tian uncertainly. To Guan Shan, she asks: ‘This is him?’ 

Meeting He Tian’s gaze, Guan Shan says, ‘It is.’

It takes them nearly an hour to get through the city on the tram, the skies just starting to fill with sunlight. The progression of time is making Guan Shan nervous and He Tian’s hand is tight in his own, but they make the connection with ten minutes to spare. 

He Tian hands their papers to the officer at the checkpoint gate, and Guan Shan holds his breath as they’re led into a windowless room. The officer takes their prints, their Holo signatures, and passes them through a decontamination unit before allowing them onto the platform where an old, decommissioned train from the city will pass through and take them through the tunnel and out to the Reserve. It takes less than ten minutes.

They’re one of only a handful others on the platform, and it’s silent here. The day is still early and the building dry heat is pleasantly bearable. It’ll be cooler in the Reserve. Guan Shan can already see the haze of treeline in the distance some miles away, the huge boughs of carbon capture machines like green clouds. There, the air will be the cleanest he’s ever breathed. There, he might not see a single soul for miles.

On the platform, He Tian beams a document from his Holo to Giana’s. 

‘This is where the girls live,’ he says. ‘You’re half a mile away, but you can walk there.’

‘If Anthony sees me—’

‘You have papers to prove everything,’ says He Tian. ‘I’ve seen to it. If there are problems, you have references who will vouch for you. Myself included.’ He runs a thumb across his lower lip. ‘It’s better that he sees you sooner than later—it’ll seem less… deceitful. I’ve sent you the contact details of a lawyer in the Reserve who can assist with organising visitation times with your daughters. It’ll be easier on that side once you’re there.’

Giana looks between the two of them, helpless. ‘I don’t know how to pay you—’

‘It’s not about payment,’ Guan Shan cuts in. ‘What I did for you in New Emirate was always short term. It… never really solved your problems or helped you. This should.’

They say nothing more, and the train arrives within minutes. He Tian motions for Giana to board one of the first carriages, and they wait for her to board before walking a little way up the platform and stepping aboard another empty carriage further away. 

Metal creaks beneath Guan Shan, the screech of unoiled tracks, and there’s a mustiness to the carriage that he can’t place. It feels as if he’s stepping into another time. Through the windows, gold light has started to flood onto the threadbare seats, making even the flecks of exposed stuffing on the retired train seem glorious. 

At the end of the line, there’ll be someone to take him to his plot, a shared house with others, a river nearby, acres of farmland and untouched woodland or wildflower. Five hundred miles east, and there’ll be rice paddies nestled among the mountains, humid lands with water karsts and caves. Birdsong in the mornings. Sunsets. 

Guan Shan could be placed anywhere—it doesn’t matter to him. There, he’ll have collective unity, no one to depend on. No one who’ll need their trauma unpacked and unburied. There, he’ll have other sets of shoulders and pairs of hands to lean on and make use of. There, he’ll have He Tian.

When he looks to the seat across from him, facing him, He Tian’s expression is unreadable. 

‘You’re crying,’ He Tian says softly.

Guan Shan doesn’t have to touch his cheeks—he can feel his nose stinging. 

‘Is it me?’ says He Tian. ‘Am I—projecting?’

‘No,’ says Guan Shan, shaking his head. ‘You sure about this? Leavin’ everythin’ after six months?’

‘That’s not what you’re asking,’ He Tian replies evenly. ‘You want to know if I’m sure about you.’

‘That’s not—’

‘I really fucking wish you could see that part of my mind to know that it’s always going to be yes. Yes, I’m sure.’

‘You don’t know that. Six months is—’

‘A blissful lifetime. One I’d hope to experience again and again.’ Without another word, He Tian comes around to sit next to him, no longer separated by the chipped, waxy table between them, his legs too long and his ankles knocking against Guan Shan’s. ‘If I don’t, there’s a big world out there for both of us to go.’

‘I just—’ Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘I’m fuckin’ terrified you’re gonna hate it. We’re gonna get there and it’ll be nothin’ like you’re used to.’

‘I’ve already been there,’ says He Tian. ‘And it _is_ nothing like I’m used to. I know what I’m getting in for. It’s you I’m worried about.’

‘Me?’ Guan Shan asks. They both look to each other as a high-pitched whistle rings out from the platform, and the train starts to silently ease its way along the electric rails. No turning back now. Guan Shan turns to He Tian. 

‘Yeah,’ says He Tian. ‘Zhengxi warned me—said you were too compelled to fix other people’s problems.’ He points a long finger towards the door that connects their carriage to another. A few carriages down, and Giana will be watching the platform disappear through her passenger window. ‘Like so. Beneath that sour exterior—’

Guan Shan snorts, wondering what else Zhengxi has happened to mention.

‘—you ride the catharsis of other people’s pain like it’s a high.’

‘Cryin’ releases endorphins,’ Guan Shan says with a shrug. 

‘And what are you going to do when you don’t get your fix? Do you honestly believe that people won’t need you there? You have your gift for a reason, and—believe me, I know—there are a lot of fucked up people in the city, but that doesn’t mean those people are any different in the Reserve.’

‘They’re happier,’ says Guan Shan. ‘It’s what all the science says.’

‘Maybe,’ says He Tian, ‘but it’s just nature—not a utopia. I’m only saying—if you wanted to help people, don’t feel like you can’t. That part of you doesn’t just belong to the city.’ 

‘You want me to start fuckin’ people again?’

He Tian’s mouth parts. ‘Ideally… not.’

‘’Cause I wouldn’t. It’s just you and me, right? No one else.’

He Tian nods. His face has started to catch the light, sunrise bringing flecks of brown in his jet black hair and eyes to life, like coal starting to turn back to earth.

‘Partners,’ says He Tian, swiping Guan Shan’s hand and bringing his lips to Guan’s knuckles. He kisses one of Guan Shan’s rings, like the tradition of some ancient custodian, and Guan Shan feels the ghost of its warmth. ‘For my part, I’ll promise to protect you from all insects.’

Guan Shan pulls a face. ‘Fuck off,’ he says, and then: ‘I mean there’s not gonna be many, right?’

He Tian laughs, and Guan Shan sits back in the seat. Quietly, he indulges in the sound, He Tian’s wide mouth and scrunched eyes, the hum of the train moving beneath him, the gold sun starting to rise, and he drinks it all down.

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to **kudos, comment, or check out more ways of supporting me[on Tumblr](http://agapaic.tumblr.com)** if you enjoy my work! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and stay safe!


End file.
